Agropolis. The Social, Political and Environmental Dimensions of Urban Agriculture

URBAN AGRICULTURE FEEDS hundreds of millions of people worldwide and is a rapidly emerging topic of concern in urban and development studies. This book presents the first harvest of graduate research in this relatively new field of investigation, supported by the International Graduate Research Awards for Research in Urban Agricultures (AGROPOLIS), a small grant facility of Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Through a series of case studies, students and academics explore the role of urban agriculture in people’s strategies to fight their own deprivations and improve their living conditions in urban areas. They investigate key research questions with regard to urban agriculture, from different perspectives and contexts and with the intention of assisting local actors, particularly governmental actors, in working out creative strategies to more effectively tackle urban food insecurity, poverty and environmental degradation. These questions include the following: What level of food insecurity pushes the urban poor to resort to urban agriculture? How may particular public policy systems and practices affect or benefit different groups of small and poor urban agriculture practitioners in terms of their well-being, contribution to food supply, management of resources, and general environmental and human health? How can gendered approaches to the study of urban agriculture bring an enriching dimension to the process and findings? What are the conditions necessary to reconcile agriculture and the city on the urban fringe? And what are the roles and responsibilities of different actors in improving the sustainability of urban agriculture?
These issues are addressed in a range of country situations, diverse in terms of the relative significance of urban agriculture and the importance of policy with regard to urban agriculture. Chapter one examines the contribution of rural–urban food transfers and urban agriculture to the food security of the urban poor in Namibia. Chapter two focuses on the pest control system in the market of Lomé in Togo. Chapter three seeks to explain the determinants of urban livestock adoption in the zone dense of Khorogo, Côte d’Ivoire. Chapter four analyzes poor women’s strategies and access to urban open space cultivation in Harare, Zimbabwe. Chapter five explores the relationship between a gendered commercial urban agriculture sector and the nature of urban food supply in greater Gaborone, Botswana. Chapter six looks at the shifting perspectives on urban agriculture in Havana, Cuba. Chapter seven relates urban agriculture with broader strategies for local sustainable development in Rosario, Argentina. Chapter eight is concerned with agri-urban development from a land use planning perspective, comparing the cases of the Saclay Plateau in France and the Sijoumi Plain in Tunisia. Finally, Chapter nine assesses the benefits from allotments as a component of urban agriculture in England.